I switched to grain-to-water soon after I started because it made hitting mash temperature easier while I learned how much heat I lost to the tun. After a few batches I had that figured out and it saved me a couple steps by grinding directly into the tun and adding water-to-grain. Less dusty, too.

I just upgraded to a larger mash tun (moving from a 5-gallon round cooler to a 9-gallon Coleman) and for my maiden voyage I wish I had held back a third or more of my strike water before adding the grain. To my surprise, the temperature didn't drop as much as I am used to (I am guessing because there was more hot water... this was also my first no-sparge batch... so it was a large amount of water, at least for my typical brews... cue foreshadowing music...).

Edit: the other change was that to fill my orange cooler, I would pour in a gallon of hot water at a time. To fill my new cooler, I drained directly from the liquor tank via heat-resistant hose... no doubt also contributing to less heat loss.

Obviously I should have said to myself, "Self, you are introducing a new variable [edit: TWO new variables...] -- use a little judgment and think through what might happen," but instead I found myself trying to quickly push the temp from 160+ to 154 in my now-almost-brimming MLT at the same time that the guys from Home Depot suddenly showed up to take away the old dishwasher that had been sitting in the kitchen all week and I was locking up cats, lowering the temp in my MLT, etc. (The Home Depot guys never asked why I was pouring water into a cooler filled with "stuff.")

I ended up with too much wort, which instead of holding back I drained into my kettle... forcing me to bail some out and then tinker with the too-low gravity... it was one of those brewdays. When I give talks about organizational leadership I use homebrewing as an example of "give yourself a safe place to fail." Homebrewing has been that for me and then some. Of course, now that I have a blue cooler, that will be a buffer against some of my brewing escapades.

Do whatever's easiest for your system. I mill directly into the mash tun first, and then pump the strike water in from the bottom while stirring. No pouring and no mess. One of the many benefits of a thin mash is that it's easy to get rid of any dough balls that arise.

Hey guys/gals, thanks for all the responses to this thread. Looks like I'm going to take the grain to water approach. Can't wait to get started on Friday night, the 29th..... all grain Pliny the Elder clone. Also will be brewing a Rebel Rye Porter (from Northern Brewer) that I got for free when I purchased my Blichmann burner. It should be a fun night with my son as we brew and drink a few from the cellar.

Friday night we (son & I) started our first all-grain (Pliny clone) and at the same time started a an extract (Rebel Rye Porter). Both recipes were entered into BeerSmith2. First the Pliny clone: We fired up the burner and got the strike water going. Brought the water (4 3/4 gal) up to163.0 F per BeerSmith and added it to our mash tun (10 gal orange cooler). Added the mash ingredients (14.45 lb.) and stirred well; no dough balls so we were happy until we took the temperature. It was right around 150.0 F so we quickly added a qt. of boiling water....no change so we added another....still no change so we put the lid on and went with it as we felt every time we removed the lid we were losing temp. Next we took a pH reading and it was a little low so we added pH stabilizer and put the lid back on. Next up was to get our sparge water ready. We brought 4 gal. water to 168.0 F. After 60 minutes we began our vorlauf and 1st runnings. Next up was to fly sparge and that was completed slowly but in terms of everything I have read we were way over the speed limit. I'm thinking we were done in 15 minutes. The boil was next and it went well as did the chilling, aerating and getting it into the primary. I took the OG and got 1.062 which was way less than the expected target of 1.083. We are not happy at this point but what can we do but go with what we have. Instead of a DIPA we end up with an all-day IPA. As long as the flavor is there we're happy...kind of. But what happened that caused the low OG? Was it the mash temp? Quick sparge? We need help here so the next one is on point. On the good side; the yeast starter went well and the primary was like a volcano in no time. Actually had to set up a blow off tube due to the amount of kraeusen entering the airlock.

The extract kit for the Porter also didn't hit the target OG. We ended up with 1.044 instead of the target 1.062. We're thinking that was a result of adding too much water. Taking on too much at once we bought our volume in the primary up to about 5.5 gal. We are assuming that resulted in our OG of being so low.

Next all-gain will be a R2H56 clone. Any suggestions to help us hit target numbers will be appreciated. I'll again be using BeerSmith2 for guidance.

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Do you use a false bottom, manifold, or screen in your mash tun? Did you drain the first runnings before fly sparging?What pH is a little low? Did the pH stabilizer get the pH to where you wanted it? Was starch conversion complete? 150 sounds like a good temp for a dipa. A mash-out step would help boost efficiency.

Do you use a false bottom, manifold, or screen in your mash tun? Did you drain the first runnings before fly sparging?What pH is a little low? Did the pH stabilizer get the pH to where you wanted it? Was starch conversion complete? 150 sounds like a good temp for a dipa. A mash-out step would help boost efficiency.

Yes, tun has a false bottom and yes we did a vorlauf until the runnings were clear. The pH was under 5 so we threw in the stabilizer. Took another reading after a couple minutes and it was at least 5. We put the lid on because of the low temp (didn't want it to get any cooler by taking the lid on and off so many times) and went with it hoping the stabilizer would continue to work and bring it up to 5.2.

BeerSmith had me mash with 19.06 qts. for 14.45 lb grain. That is 1.31 qts/lb. Is that really enough? I just read in John Palmers book that he recommends 2 qts./lb. Just wondering what is right.